BI Wars: Microsoft Awakens

BI Wars: Microsoft Awakens

A long time ago in a galaxy of data far, far away….

Mega-vendors and niche vendors aligned forces to expand on-premises business Intelligence battles into the cloud. The increasing commotion awakened one sleeping giant that has significant offerings and massive sales forces across both realms, Microsoft. If I were not a prisoner of these BI wars, I could share much more insight with you. Until I escape my captor, here is what you need to know about the BI universe and Microsoft BI as of January 1, 2016.

Source: Screenrant.com

Current State of Business Intelligence

For several years now, BI has been the #1 top ranked IT priority for CIOs and business leaders according to Gartner. There has never been a better time to be in the BI business.

Source: Gartner

Numerous sources such as Forrester and IDC share forecasts of continued strong growth over the next five years. Globally BI revenue is projected to reach $20.81 billion in 2018 with one of the fastest growing segments being the cloud BI space. According to Redwood Capital, cloud BI accounted for a mere $0.75 billion slice of the pie in 2013 and is expected to grow to a $2.94 billion slice by 2018 for an estimated CAGR of 31%.

The cloud BI forecasts combined with expected Internet of Things (IoT) data explosion and lower barriers to entry in the cloud world have attracted an endless list of newcomers. Mega-vendors and niche vendors have stepped up investments. They are literally on spending sprees building, buying or aligning with other cloud solutions across the entire data lifespan preparing for the digital business transformation. Today we are seeing massive portfolios of cloud micro-services, APIs, and SaaS apps saturate the market. Often these apps are low cost or free with caveats on the data. In a cloud world, data is gold.

What about On-Premises BI?

Despite all the excitement and marketing emphasis from Microsoft on the cloud BI space, most BI implementations today happen on-premises. The same forecasts mentioned above estimate that cloud BI will continue to be just a tiny slice of the overall BI market opportunity for the immediate foreseeable future. Thus on-premises BI is incredibly relevant and cannot be forgotten or ignored.

Power BI Desktop is Microsoft’s answer to Tableau Desktop, Qlik Sense Desktop, Spotfire Desktop, SAP Lumira Desktop and other competitive desktop self-service BI/data discovery offerings. Microsoft re-entering the on-premises enterprise BI game with Power BI Desktop will make waves and unquestionably add sales pressure for other BI vendors that have filled on-premises voids while they were sleeping.

BI Wars Intensify

Source: HD Wallpaper

Of all the BI vendors, Microsoft has the largest existing customer base in the BI universe with unmatched reach via Office, Excel and SQL Server. When a giant like Microsoft wakes up from on-premises hibernation, it will not go unnoticed. With the success of Microsoft Power BI in 2015 and increasing speed of innovation across all BI vendors, the BI wars throughout the galaxy are going to get quite a bit more interesting to watch evolve this coming year.

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Jen Underwood is a Senior Director at DataRobot and founder of Impact Analytix, LLC. She has a unique blend of product management and “hands-on” experience in data warehousing, reporting, visualization, and advanced analytics. In addition to keeping a constant pulse on industry trends, she enjoys digging into oceans of data to solve complex problems with machine learning.
Over the past 20 years, Jen has held worldwide product management roles at Microsoft and served as a technical lead for system implementation firms. She has experience launching new products and turning around failed projects. Most recently she provided advisory, strategy, educational content development, and marketing services to 100+ technology vendors through her own firm. She has been mentioned by KD Nuggets, Information Management and Forbes for her work. She also has written for InformationWeek, O’Reilly Media, and numerous other tech industry publications.
Jen has a Bachelor of Business Administration – Marketing, Cum Laude from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and a post-graduate certificate in Computer Science – Data Mining from the University of California, San Diego. She was also honored to be a former IBM Analytics Insider, Tableau Zen Master, and Top 10 Women Influencer.